A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child — Deleted Scenes

The most noted cut scene from A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 surrounds Greta’s death. Written as a girl who suffers from bulimia to keep her model figure, Greta’s death involved Freddy scooping out her stomach and feeding her the innards—proving “you are what you eat.” Additionally, Dan’s original transformation sequence was more detailed.

Director Stephen Hopkins discussed the trimming of these scenes in Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy. “We just had to keep cutting and cutting and cutting [those scenes], sending [the film] back and forth to the MPAA—I don’t know, 20 times or something,” said Hopkins. “Greta’s death was deemed to be much too foul. Freddy fed her herself in the end. It’s sort of silly to take it seriously. I think if we had a longer post [production] we could have fought about it [with the MPAA].”

“I just know that scene was much longer and gorier, but it sort of happened super-fast the way [the scene] ended up,” added actress Erika Anderson. “I don’t think it was as good; it didn’t have as much impact.”

Due to MPAA objection, both scenes were trimmed for the theatrical release to achieve an R rating. They were later restored for the Laserdisc and VHS uncensored editions; however, the DVD and Blu-ray releases do not include these scenes because of rumored film master problems.